Time for a French dose of Morbid Fear who are ready to poison us with their debut dose of Hemlock. Established by musician JCEX who was later joined by vocalist Sakrifiss their work is described as ‘Haunting black metal’ and that is very apt as this is certainly going to give you a shiver down the spine and goosebumps. We take some clues from the CD presentation which is all in blue shades. There are photographs that are captured in time. A person looks about to jump off a bridge, a group of Japanese students sit in a playground, stone angels weep in a graveyard, a ghoulish figure stands reflected in a lit window, someone cycles down a road. They are all quite unnerving and so too are the track titles once translated to the likes of ‘Nothing Left,’ ‘Vision Of Death’ and ‘The End Is Near.’

The first track “fertilises” us with the rumble of industrial machinery. It sounds like we could be in a massive, cavernous warehouse on the docks. One gets the feeling that there is no actual sign of life, the machines are doing their own thing, perhaps until they run out of life themselves and stop. After this we have ambient background noise and ghostly spoken words with guitars mournfully strumming, taking up the spaces, someone whistles in the background and an aura of depressiveness is apparent. There are plenty of spoken passages during the course of the album sounding like they could have been channelled via séance but occasionally, low in the mix there are some malignant sounding vocal rasps. The whole thing with the treble gothic fluttering of the guitar is quite chilling and also fragmentary. “Songs” form spectrally and crawl out like they are emerging from fog and mist with tenebrous touch. It’s all rather spooky and macabre and as that is what I expect the players were looking for they have achieved this in a highly atmospheric fashion.

It’s quite unique too, think a little along the lines of Xasthur, mired with French countrymen Spektr along with a little bit of Bauhaus and the dark ambient horror music of Lustmord, you will be scratching at the tombstone door of what to expect from this. No doubt there is a German black and white expressionist film flickering in the background. Some may find it a little too loose and that actual songs are hidden obliquely in the folds of the music. One does not get the feeling that linear approach is what the artists are looking for, each track is a snapshot of a memory frozen in time from what I can determine, perhaps matching the aforementioned pictures.

It is quite heavily defined with the treble aspects up front, this makes the occasional thump and rumble of drumming and bass all the more effective when they add weight occasionally. This could be seen as an odd approach but it makes sense when something like the sound of an organ peels quickly away before the rumbling sound of approaching doom thunders in the distance. It’s not a purely horror approach though, there are also some Western guitar jangles on tracks like ‘Plus Rien,’ “nothing is left” but nobody has told the gunslingers haunting the cemetery and saloon at this particular ghost-town. These are highly effective ‘visions of death’ and have been designed to be quite disquieting putting the listener’s nerves on edge. Playing this in the dark is the route the more adventurous explorer should take but even in the daylight when the sun is shining brightly this will chill you to the very bones and poison your soul.

(7.5/10 Pete Woods)

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https://ladlo.bandcamp.com/album/la-cigu